The Content Brief: Banner Ads Will Evolve, Not Go Away (Video)

Banner ads — blech. That seemed to be the consensus from a round-up of early banner ad creators and adoptersconvened recently by Digiday, who lamented that banner ads today represent “nothing but eye candy on the page” and “a race to the bottom.” And those were the nicer comments! Is there a better way?

Would Don Draper have “hated banner ads,” as Buzzfeed’s Jonah Peretti says? Probably, but as much as the trend right now is native ads and sponsored content, scalability makes it unlikely that banner ads, or the larger category of display advertising, will be completely eliminated.

And marketers will tell you that banner ads work, because the minuscule click-through-rates really aren’t a measurement of their effectiveness, and display should be just one part of a campaign anyway.